An Anachronism That Still Flourishes
Roger Berkowitz
12-01-2024 A.M. Hickman offers a Thanksgiving meditation on upstate New York. It is a place in decline and it is the place he was born in. While younger residents of the area dream of leaving and while migrants crossing the Canadian border dream of other and more optimistic American pastures, Hickman looks to the old-timers, the Amish boys, and roughshod unemployed guys with one two many DUI's. He finds in the despair a beauty and, more importantly, a throwback to a rural and independent American spirit. It is easy to look past or look down upon the people in upstate New York. Hickman does not. And he suggests we should heed them as well. He writes:
If nothing else, at least decline is honest. This is a place that is, above all, an acquired taste—a place that does not threaten to gentrify or “develop” anytime soon, if ever. That’s altogether a good thing in the minds of the remaining North Country residents, who cling to a simpler way of life.
Here, a poor man can still buy a few weedy acres and cobble together a rude shanty to live in; the elements will govern his actions and his thoughts. Land and man mirror one another here—neither is reduced to a fungible, interchangeable object—the roots are too deep. Icy roads may prevent travel; necessity may force a farmer to make do with what he fashions by hand. The circumstances of weather and distance underscore the blessing found in beef and bread in a manner now lost in our nation’s more “relevant” places. And in the high helium skies of January, a man may raise his head to find God there, laughing above the geese and the crows. His land is a canvas for the labors of an implacable, surly, hardworking seeker of holiness and liberty. In these respects, the North Country still forms a perfect portrait of America—original, old, dogged in her passion for hard-won subsistence and glory.
If Thomas Jefferson or Johnny Appleseed strode up to these parts today, they might find it to be one of the only areas of the United States that is still recognizably American by their standards. The droning homogeneity of elsewhere might only send them into a depression, but here, overgrown orchards and crumbling Monticellos still abound. Upstate New York is, as Edmund Wilson dubbed it, “an anachronism that still flourishes,” a region in which practically everything from the buildings to the farm equipment to the people themselves feels like a long-forgotten yet still-living antique.
As I meditated on these matters and stared at the ghastly white stone landmarks on the border, I was glad to be on this side of it and not the other. For as much as I adore Canada and consider her to be our sister nation, we belong over here. Not only in America, but up here in the distant, icy, somber ruins of former days, where the ghosts of our forefathers still seem to be walking around in the woods.
Here, a poor man can still buy a few weedy acres and cobble together a rude shanty to live in; the elements will govern his actions and his thoughts. Land and man mirror one another here—neither is reduced to a fungible, interchangeable object—the roots are too deep. Icy roads may prevent travel; necessity may force a farmer to make do with what he fashions by hand. The circumstances of weather and distance underscore the blessing found in beef and bread in a manner now lost in our nation’s more “relevant” places. And in the high helium skies of January, a man may raise his head to find God there, laughing above the geese and the crows. His land is a canvas for the labors of an implacable, surly, hardworking seeker of holiness and liberty. In these respects, the North Country still forms a perfect portrait of America—original, old, dogged in her passion for hard-won subsistence and glory.
If Thomas Jefferson or Johnny Appleseed strode up to these parts today, they might find it to be one of the only areas of the United States that is still recognizably American by their standards. The droning homogeneity of elsewhere might only send them into a depression, but here, overgrown orchards and crumbling Monticellos still abound. Upstate New York is, as Edmund Wilson dubbed it, “an anachronism that still flourishes,” a region in which practically everything from the buildings to the farm equipment to the people themselves feels like a long-forgotten yet still-living antique.
As I meditated on these matters and stared at the ghastly white stone landmarks on the border, I was glad to be on this side of it and not the other. For as much as I adore Canada and consider her to be our sister nation, we belong over here. Not only in America, but up here in the distant, icy, somber ruins of former days, where the ghosts of our forefathers still seem to be walking around in the woods.